Flintstones, Sunday, October 1961

Here’s the bonus comic post we promised. The Flintstones Sunday comics debuted 50 years ago this month so let’s spend the anniversary looking at what Stone Age family fans got to see back then. The debut comic has been grabbed from Mike Lynch’s website, the others are scans of newspaper photocopies. Jerry Eisenberg told me his dad Harvey did the first five Sunday comics then begged off because of the workload.



The Flintstones’ first appearance in the Sunday (in Canada, Saturday) papers was October 8th. The overhead view of the garage is a nice layout variation.
Why Dino is going “gleech,” I don’t know. And there’s a bit of unintentional inside humour with Barney pretending to be Dino’s voice, since Mel Blanc did both of them on the cartoons. Wilma batting Fred like that doesn’t strike me as something that would happen on TV, especially after Pebbly-poo was born and the show became tame. Fortunately, that little shark-jumping bait hadn’t been invented yet.



The guys are floating in the air on October 15th, reminiscent of ‘The Flintstone Flyer’ episode. One of the things I’ve noticed about these early comics is the character designs look pretty much like what you see on TV (Wilma in the lower left-hand panel for example). Their faces started to look disconcertingly odd after awhile; I won’t begin to speculate who was drawing the comics then.



A couple of silhouette panels highlight the October 22nd comic. I can see this as a gag they’d use on the TV show.



They must have loved dentistry in Bedrock. This comic from October 29th predates the ‘Nuttin’ But the Tooth’ episode of The Flintstones with Smiley Molar, dinosaur dentist (only on the TV show, Barney is the patient).

As with the Yogi Sunday comics, you can click on them to enlarge them.

Quick Draw McGraw — Bronco Bustin’ Boobs

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voices: Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snuffles – Daws Butler; Mild Bill, Little Horse, Ringmaster – Don Messick.
Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin.
First Aired: week of February 8, 1960 (rerun, week of August 8, 1960).
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-020, Production J-60.
Plot: Quick Draw is hired to capture a tiny horse.

It has been said time and time again that Quick Draw McGraw never rode a horse because, well, he’s a horse. But this cartoon proves otherwise.

It actually brings to mind the 1953 Barney Bear cartoon Half-Pint Palomino from the non-Hanna-Barbera unit at MGM at the time under the direction of Dick Lundy. In that one, written by Heck Allen and Jack Cosgriff, Barney and Benny Burro set out for the Grand Canyon to capture the world’s smallest horse for an eccentric millionaire. In this one, Quick Draw and Baba Looey (a burro) set out for Little Horse Canyon (population: one little horse) to capture a midget wild horse for Mild Bill’s Wild West Show. Despite the huge number of ex-MGMers at Hanna-Barbera in the early days, none who worked on the first cartoon were involved with this one. (see footnote at bottom of post)

The star of the cartoon really isn’t Quick Draw. It’s Snuffles. I love Snuffles. He’s the least altruistic cartoon hero in history. He has no loyalty. He has a simple life philosophy. Give him a dog biscuit, he’ll do anything. Don’t give him one and he’ll cancel the job. Business is business. In a way, he was an alter ego of Bill and Joe. He didn’t exist because he was a funny character, even though he was. He existed because business is business. Kellogg’s gave Hanna and Barbera money. Kellogg’s liked Snuffles. So Bill and Joe kept putting Snuffles in cartoons. Oh, and for good measure, they also put Gro-Pup T-Bone Dog Biscuits in the cartoons, something which just happened to be made by Kellogg’s. Read more about that in this blog post.

This was Snuffles’ third cartoon of the season. He doesn’t appear until about the last third, so writer Mike Maltese ably fills the interim with Quick Draw being a simpleton and a klutz (it’s a happy coincidence one of the background cues is a Jack Shaindlin piece called ‘Crazy Goof’). The cartoon opens Quick Draw and Baba in their trusty jeep on their way to an undisclosed job with Mild Bill. Their new boss looks more like Buffalo Bill Cody than Wild Bill Hickok and has the same speech impediment as Elmer Fudd and wadio’s Waymond Wadcwiffe, though Don Messick doesn’t try to imitate Arthur Q. Bryan’s characters.



Mild Bill needs a new act for his Wild West Show. Naturally, Quick Draw thinks he’s being offered the job, and demonstates his act, first with an imitation of a yellow-feathered thrush and then some fancy shootin’. Of course, that brings about the end result (and the catchphrase “Oh. That smarts” when Quick Draw shoots himself in the foot). Say, why is it he’s indoors when he’s doing his bird call but outside when he’s twirling his gun? Bit of a background error, it appears. Quick Draw warns Mild Bill the job will cost him plenty—a season’s pass to the Wild West Show. Evidently, Baba Looey will have to get his own.





Our heroes arrive at their destination. The backgrounds feature clouds with borders around them and interesting colour blends. They spot their prey. For while, the cartoon features pulled-into-immoveable-things gags as Quick Draw shouts to the galloping lassoed little horse that he’ll put him in show business.

● Horse pulls body (and Quick Draw) off jeep and into a boulder.
● Horse pulls Quick Draw into another boulder.
● Horse, with Quick Draw riding him, romps into small hole in cliff. Quick Draw smashes against side of cliff.



In the last gag, Quick Draw is showing off his trick riding skills for Baba and looking at the audience and doesn’t notice the cliff. I couldn’t help but notice this reminded me of Maltese’s famous Wile E. Coyote Batman-suit gag in Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z (1956).

With three minutes left in the cartoon, Quick Draw decides to bring in Snuffles.

No time is wasted for Snuffles to go into his ecstasy routine. I suppose H-B could have cheapened out and re-used the hugging and floating animation from his second cartoon (done by Lew Marshall; he doesn’t float in the first one) but Ken Muse takes a crack at it. Muse seems to have problems with the proportions on Snuffles’ head in some parts of the cartoon. Here’s a frame of Snuffles and Quick Draw which cuts, in the next frame, to a shot of Snuffles.



Snuffles immediately nabs the little horse. Ah, but Quick Draw can’t give him the promised dog biscuit in return. Deal’s off. Snuffles puts the horse back in the cave, a bit Maltese would use in future cartoons. “Hold on thar!” Quick Draw catchphrases. He and Snuffles shake hands (er, hoof and paw) over a promise to hand over a whole box of dog biscuits, which happens to be in town.

Back to the Mild West show. Mild Bill comes out a-shootin’ on the little horse. Snuffles wants his dog biscuits. The Gro-Pup package isn’t the one you and I would have found in a store in 1960, but that’s not Snuffles’ complaint. The box is empty. Deal’s off. He slams the box over Quick Draw’s head and absconds with the little horse.



Baba: Oh, oh. That Mild Bill, he’s going to be a Wild Bill now.
Quick Draw: Don’t fret none, Baba. I have a say-lution.

The scene fades out and fades in to Mild Bill, a-shootin’ and a-hollerin’ on the little horse. Everything seems normal until Quick Draw bids “I’m on my way” to Mild Bill, who replies “Good wuck, Qwick Dwaw. And I hopes ya find that widdo hoss.” It turns out the horse Mild Bill is on is really Baba Looey. Iris out.

We’re missing a catchphrase in this cartoon. Quick Draw doesn’t tell us he’ll do the thinnin’ around here.

One little piece of music is almost completely drowned out by Daws Butler and sound effects. The sound cutter has the sense, as in the second Snuffles cartoon, to cut the stock music when Snuffles is floating down to the tinkling percussion sound.

0:00 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub Main Title theme (Curtin).
0:15 - LAF-6-16 Sportscope-ish (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw and Baba in jeep.
0:41 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw and Baba talk to Mild Bill, bird calls
1:01 - GR-75 POPCORN SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – Gun trick.
1:14 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Bill says he’s after horse, Quick Draw agrees to take job.
1:55 - GR-248 STREETS OF THE CITY (Green) – Quick Draw and Baba drive to canyon, horse pulls Quick Draw into rock, horse under hat runs into cave.
4:07 - GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Green) – Snuffles eats biscuit.
4:20 - musical effect – Snuffles floats in air.
4:26 - GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Green) – Snuffles zips into cave.
4:44 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Snuffles gets horse, puts him back, makes deal for whole box.
5:24 - rising scale vaudeville music (Shaindlin) – Mild Bill introduces horse, no more dog biscuits, Snuffles takes horse, Quick Draw has solution.
6:24 - fast circus chase music (Shaindlin) – Mild Bill rides “horse,” Baba in disguise.
7:00 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub-Main title (Curtin).

Yowp note: The Ruff and Reddy ‘G’ series of 13 episodes (aired 1958) centred around a tiny horse named (surprise) Pee Wee who was hoss-napped by Harry Safari. Ruff, Reddy, a burro named Poco Loco and the horse’s mother set out to rescue him. At least some cartoons in that series were animated by Lew Marshall with backgrounds by Art Lozzi and some gooney-looking character designs by Ed Benedict.

More Faces of Jellystone Park

Over the course of Yogi Bear’s life, he became a permanent resident of Jellystone Park, and Hanna-Barbera’s artists took advantage of that to draw the park entrance to serve as an establishing shot for many cartoons.

For a studio that liked saving money, it’s surprising that one background drawing of the entrance wasn’t made and then put away to be used whenever necessary. Instead, layout and background artists were free to come up with a new one for each cartoon. Only one was reused, and that was in the first season of Yogi’s cartoons on the Huckleberry Hound Show.

In THIS post, you got to see a number of the drawings. I’ve gone through the remaining Yogi cartoons to let you look at the rest. All of them were broadcast on Yogi’s own half-hour show. I’m not going to comment too much on the art technique because I’m woefully ignorant about it. Anyone who can comment about it, please do.

On a few occasions, there was a pan across the background drawing but only in Do or Diet (see right) is there a vertical pan. That’s why the stone walls seem so high. Tony Rivera was the layout man on this cartoon and Dick Thomas did the backgrounds. Rivera liked isosceles triangles of green with crosses in them representing trees and had them in several cartoons. Thomas wasn’t particularly adventuresome when it came to colour but he’s added some yellow in the foreground for variation.



Rivera and Thomas join together again in Cub Scout Boo Boo. There’s a stone wall overlay on the left here to enable animation of buses to pass from right to left on the background and ‘enter’ the park.



Home Sweet Jellystone featured layouts by Don Sheppard, who spent a good chunk of time at Hanna-Barbera after a pile of stops in the ‘50s. He’s also known for something probably best left undiscussed—he worked on the Rudy Larriva Roadrunner cartoons for Format Films in the ‘60s. Whether he was freelancing at H-B for this cartoon isn’t clear; he had been working at UPA. We have squiggly-line trees here. Bob Gentle drew the background.



There’s also a Jellystone entrance on the title card to the cartoon. I understand Dick Bickenbach drew the titles. Nice silhouette. Note the blending on the blue sky.



Different shades of green and yellow try to spruce up (no pun intended) the opening shot of Love Bugged Bear. Tony Rivera and Vera Ohman Hanson are responsible for this one.



This is the only night shot of the Jellystone entrance and is from Bareface Disguise. The stick-lines-within-trees gives away that Rivera handled the layouts. Thomas did the backgrounds.



You can click to enlarge this background that was panned at the opening of Slap Happy Birthday. Lovely fall colours here from Dick Thomas. The layout is by Bick, the last he did on a Yogi short, I believe.



The entrance in Disguise and Gals looks makeshift enough to be on The Flintstones. Note the choice of colours on the background hills. Walt Clinton did the layouts here and Bob Gentle the backgrounds. This isn’t an establishing shot; it shows up about a minute into the cartoon. The right side of the entrance is an overlay.



The Jellystone entrance in Acrobatty Yogi is near the end of the cartoon. The left part is an overlay. Layouts by Dan Noonan and backgrounds by Dick Thomas.



Now a couple by Art Lozzi. He was doing some distinctive things about this time, especially with colours. See the different shades he incorporates into the trees? And he liked downward-hanging fronds, kind of like fingers.This is from Loco Locomotive. Tony Rivera handled layouts.



Here’s an establishing background panned in Yogi in the City. Art liked wrapping clouds around background hills. Can you spot the thin, black lines Art uses in the trees to give them a more vertical appearance? Tony Rivera is, again, the layout man.



Rivera laid out this background by Neenah Maxwell. Sure looks different than the Lozzi stuff, doesn’t it? It’s from Droop-a-long Yogi. The right side of the entrance and the tree in the foreground are overlays as a TV truck rolls along the road in this scene.

It isn’t only the Jellystone entrances that are different every cartoon. Ranger Smith seems to have all kinds of different stations, no two alike. And Yogi must have moved a lot because he has a new cave in every cartoon. If there’s a chance, I’ll post some shots so you can get a look at the varied art in these early Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Yogi Bear, Sunday, October 1961

Well, dear fans of Yowp, we’ll have to see how many more of these Yogi comic strip posts make their way onto the blog. I feel like I’m duplicating material from other blogs, especially Ger Apeldoorn’s wonderful spot on the internet where his scanner has been working overtime to bring you all kinds of old strips. And Mark Kausler has been putting some up on the internet, too. Both of those fine gentlemen have huge colour collections of these comics. I just have photocopies of newspapers in black-and-white.

The October 1st Yogi ends with a variation on the old “crash into painted tunnel” gag you’ll find in a bunch of animated cartoons. Yogi helped catch crooks in several of his TV adventures, like Big Brave Bear, Bare Face Bear (featuring Yowp’s farewell performance) and Disguise and Gals.



Here’s one to get all those people obsessed with continuity in a knot. Ranger Smith’s putting the move on a blonde babe on October 8th. Yes, I know he’s married in the comics. Yes, I know he’s married in at least one cartoon (in Wound Up Bear, he complains about “Mabel and her charge accounts”). No one worried about more than a basic situation back then. So you shouldn’t worry about it now.

I’ll leave it to the experts to suggest whose artwork this is.



Huckleberry Hound makes a visit in the October 15th comic. The end rhyme is really stretching things. Where’s the luck? And is that supposed to be a woodchuck on the mailbox?



Take a flying saucer from Space Bear (and add a tail fin), Yogi accidentally going airborn as in The Buzzin’ Bear and destroying the Ranger’s cabin in Bewitched Bear and build from there. That happened in October 22nd comic where Yogi outsmarts Ranger Smith.



And the Yogi-in-show biz idea which we saw in Show Biz Bear and Droop-a-long Bear gets a workout on October 29th. Kids, that thing Yogi is sitting on in the last panel is a TV antennae. Way back when, the antenna was attached to a flat cable that contained two sets of thin wires that were each wrapped around a screw on the back of a TV set. That’s how the picture was received. It was the latest thing back then. That’s more than I can say for that Bell and Howell-type movie camera that could have come from the silent film days. I like the Barrymore-esque profile of the actor.



There’ll be a bonus newspaper comic post later this month.

Augie Doggie — Swat’s the Matter

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation – Carlo Vinci; Layout – Paul Sommer?; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle?; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson (no credits available).
Voice Cast: Augie, Mosquitoes – Daws Butler; Doggie Daddy – Doug Young.
Music: Phil Green; Jack Shaindlin; Harry Bluestone/Emil Cadkin.
First Aired: week of February 22, 1960 (rerun, week of August 22, 1960).
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-22, Production No. J-64.
Plot: Doggie Daddy takes on mosquitoes invading his home.

On a temperate spring day in 1959, Mike Maltese was relaxing in his office at the Hanna-Barbera studio, as he was apt to do, when an idea came to him. “Musketeers,” he laughed to no one in particular. “It sounds so much like ‘mosquitoes.’ Why not do a cartoon where mosquitoes are musketeers?”

Now, that may not have happened at all. But, considering Maltese’s sense of humour, it’s not much of a stretch. It seems he loved playing with words. There’s something off the wall—Maltese’s specialty—about sword-wielding mosquitoes that buzz “All for one and one for all!” And there’s really only one fall-guy character Maltese was writing for that would run afoul of insects interrupting his life, and that’s Doggie Daddy. Dear Old Dad had already battled ants in In the Picnic of Time earlier in the season.

Maltese, the vaudeville-loving ham, would never have made a Method actor. For if his mosquito were to ask “What’s my motivation?” he’d have a hard time finding it in Maltese’s story. He and his buddies invade the Daddy residence for no particular reason and go after dad in a combination of violence and gallantry. They win in the end, but it’s not clear what they’ve really gained. Either Maltese didn’t have time to flesh out the plot, or he didn’t care, and was more interested in the musketeer/mosquito pun.

The cartoon starts out like it’s going to be one about trying to sleep. That’s what Daddy’s attempting to do on the couch as Augie is doing his homework nearby. “Can’t you use soft lead in dat pencil?” Daddy enquires, grimacing over the noise. Augie agrees to be quiet and Daddy goes back to snoozing.



Three mosquitos zip across an attractive little background drawing, land on a window sill and agree to attack Daddy. A cute gag has the three flipping coins to decide who’s going to poke him with their stinger. You can see a bit of Carlo’s early H-B animation style here with the thick row of teeth and the winning mosquito’s head jerking from side to side (it seems to me Carlo used the puttering-mouth sleeping animation on Huck that Doggie Daddy has in this cartoon). But his animation is less distinctive than it was in the earlier cartoons. His outrageous takes are missing here (and got watered down after the first season of The Flintstones). Still, Carlo was no hack and his cycle animation of Doggie Daddy in the mosquito sabre fight later on is pretty fluid. Some of it is on ones and Daddy twists his body as he thrusts and parries.



Maltese drags out an old gag. Augie goes to swat the mosquito over Daddy’s nose and swats Daddy instead. “Run for your life! Da ceilin’s fallin’,” cries Daddy. In the next scene, Daddy resumes his attempt to “Cruis’ da Sout Pacific” in his dreams. Meanwhile, Augie gets the unusual idea to put glue on Daddy’s nose. That way, the mosquito will get stuck when it lands there and he’ll catch him. The mosquito’s ahead of Augie. He jumps on a shovel in the fireplace which conveniently has a hot piece of coal on it. The coal lands on Daddy’s nose. You can guess what happens. “When I wake up, I’m going to give a yell,” predicts Daddy. And he does.

Daddy comes up with his own brilliant idea. He has a saucepan ready. Just as the mosquito’s about to jab him, Daddy puts the saucepan over his face. There’s a metallic smack and the mosquito lays stunned on the ground. Just in time, the mosquito gets out of the way of a flyswatter. Daddy chases him with the swatter. They go off stage right. Back they come. The “chicken mosquito” is chasing Daddy and swatting him. They go off stage left. Augie chases the mosquito with a DDT spray canister (ah, the ‘50s!) “You can’t do that to my dad,” he cries. They go off stage right. Back they come. The mosquito is spraying Augie. “I guess you can.” The pace of the scene is fast. I don’t know whether Bill Hanna was still timing cartoons at this period or if Alex Lovy had started doing it, but the timing’s great.



Dad answers Augie’s cry for help. He grabs a “king-size stinger.” Here’s Carlo at work again. He gives Daddy a little “I’ll get you” expression and an appropriate bent wrist as he prepares to do battle. Carlo always adds a little something.

Now we get the mosquitoes as musketeers duelling with Daddy, who gives a little commentary as we go along. “Why couldn’t we have mosquitoes dat play chess?” Daddy rhetorically asks us. The one mosquito twirls Daddy’s sabre into the ceiling. “Have mine. You’re welcome” buzzes the mosquito. At least, I’m guessing those are the words. The mosquitoes simply say “Bzzzz, bzzz” the whole cartoon, even while crossing sabres with Daddy, who is shouting “Ha, aha! Take dat” during the match.

Augie captures him inside a toilet plunger shot from a bow that’s shot against the wall. That’s the cue for the other two mosquitoes to come to the rescue. They back Daddy through a door, which he slams shut and hangs horizontal between the door and a stairwell post. The mosquito shoves his sabre through the door’s keyhole. I’d rather not think where it ended up.



Daddy pins the second mosquito with his sabre. The third cuts a ceiling light which crashes on top of Daddy. The two mosquitoes push Daddy back toward the entrance of the basement stairs. Down he goes off-camera. Daddy knows when he’s licked. The shot cuts to the mosquitoes with their sabres crossed buzzing “One for all and all for one.” Daddy proves he’s a good sport. “After all, how many folks can say they’ve got the Three Mosquito-Teers in dere livin’ room?” And Daddy chuckles away to end the cartoon.



The sound cutter was smart enough to accent the noise of Augie’s pencil at the beginning of the cartoon by not having any background music. Most of the music in the first half is by Phil Green. There’s a lovely fast quasi-classical piece that I’m guessing is from the Sam Fox library. It was used in a few Augies and at least one Snooper and Blabber over the next two seasons.

0:00 - Augie Doggie Main Title theme (Curtin).
0:05 - no music – Augie doing homework.
0:26 - GR-257 BEDTIME STORY (Green) – “I’m tryin’ to take a nap,”
0:46 - no music – Mosquitoes fly onto Daddy’s window sill.
0:55 - GR-255 PUPPETRY COMEDY (Green) – Mosquitoes flip coins, Augie swats Daddy, apologises.
1:48 - GR-257 BEDTIME STORY (Green) – Dad snoozes, Augie gets an idea.
2:08 - EM-107 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Green) – Coal scene.
2:45 - GR-258 THE TIN DRAGOONS (Green) – Saucepan over face, mosquito on floor, swatter comes down.
3:27 - light symphonic music with strings (?) – Mosquito buzzes away, swats Daddy, Augie sprays mosquito, mosquito sprays Augie, Daddy grabs sabre, yells “En guard-ee.”
4:05 - jaunty bassoon and skipping strings (Shaindlin) – Mosquito puts down sprayer.
4:22 - tick-tock flute music (Shaindlin) – “If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” mosquito gives Daddy his sabre, Augie captures mosquito with plunger.
5:08 - CB-89A ROMANTIC JAUNT (Cadkin-Bluestone) – Mosquito struggles, other mosquitos grab sabre, Daddy goes through door, mosquitoes chat.
5:44 - LFU-117-2 MAD RUSH No 2 (Shaindlin) – Mosquito shoves sabre through keyhole, Daddy pins mosquito, light fixture lands on Daddy, Daddy crashes down stairs.
6:13 - PG-161H LIGHT MOVEMENT (Green) – Augie runs to Daddy, points to mosquitoes.
6:27 - tick-tock flute music (Shaindlin) – Mosquitos are musketeers, Daddy tag line.
6:49 - Augie Doggie End Title theme (Curtin).